Jeff Weintraub

Commentaries and Controversies

Friday, August 16, 2002

What do Iraqis want? (Martin Woollacott - August 2002)

This piece by Martin Woollacott in the Guardian doesn't offer anything like a definitive answer to the question posed in the heading, but it does offer some useful food for thought. The main reason it struck my eye is that it very effectively points out something important about the current debates: With very few exceptions, neither proponents nor opponents of military action against Saddam Hussein's regime actually care much about what Iraqis themselves might want, or about the welfare of ordinary Iraqis.

(This is obviously true of the two partly-overlapping Bush administrations, of course; but I'm afraid that, with some exceptions, it's also true of almost arguments against military action that I've seen. Naturally, some people on both sides claim to be motivated by humanitarian concern about the Iraqi population, but I sometimes find it hard to decide which kind of hypocrisy--or, sometimes, naivete--I find more offensive.)

If most Iraqis are ready for the risks of a war to get rid of Saddam, it may not mean in itself that such a war would be wise, but surely it alters the context in which decisions are to be made. The American administration may not see what it plans as primarily a rescue of the Iraqi people but that is, among other things, what it would be.

If we decide not to join in an effort to rescue the Iraqis because the effort would be too costly and dangerous to us, exposing our own populations to unacceptable risk, then we had better be honest about it, as we were during the cold war when we left the Hungarians and others to the mercy of the Russians. Prudence, however, is not the only virtue that nations can display.

During the past few weeks, I've tried to avoid getting sucked too deeply into these debates myself, since that could easily swallow up all one's time. (That's one reason why I'm afraid I've left a few loose ends dangling in my e-mail exchanges--temporarily, I hope.) But this piece highlights some issues worth considering.

At a recent conference on the rights and wrongs of military intervention in Iraq, a division quickly emerged among the academics attending. Those of American or European background were almost all strongly against intervention. Those of Iraqi background, though now holding posts in western universities, were for it, as long as they could be sure it would not be abandoned halfway through. Both sides were conscious of the physical risks of war, both were doubtful about the motives and behaviour of the Bush administration and both had anxieties about the precedents that might be set in international law. But they ended the argument in different places.

That difference reflects a wider division between the left and liberal classes in the west, especially in Europe, and what might be called the Iraqi liberal diaspora. Indeed, outside of specialist circles like that at the conference, it is less a difference than an ignorance. Close to one in six Iraqis are in exile, and it is extraordinary that the views of this large community, as well as the insights they offer into the feelings of those still in the country, should have been neglected so far in the Iraq debate.

That debate goes back and forth, as it has done in Britain over the last three weeks, with only the most perfunctory references to the views of Iraqis themselves. Opponents of the war, after the obligatory admission that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant, move rapidly on to criticise the wilfulness of American policy, the danger of flouting international law, the risks that weapons of mass destruction will be used and the anger of Arabs and other Muslims at an assault on a fraternal country, especially when the US has put so little pressure on Israel to change its ways.

Most advocates of war, after an equally brief mention of Saddam's sins against his own people, move on just as rapidly to stress the danger that the same weapons of mass destruction (those Saddam has now and those he may soon acquire), represent to people outside Iraq, especially to Israel and to western countries. Until now it has been a largely selfish debate in Europe and America, centring on the threats to the west and its friends on the one hand, and on the moral issues arising from American hegemony on the other. It has been all about us, and not at all about them. It has been even more selfish among Arabs, if it has taken place at all. The spectrum of what it is politically permissible to agitate about in Arab countries runs from Palestine at one end to Palestine at the other, with no room, in public at least, for the plight of Iraqis.

The measure of Iraqi opinion abroad is not to be found in the statements of the professional opposition but in the private opinions of hundreds of thousands of households around the world. The Iraqi diaspora is one largely created by Saddam's regime and it is naturally animated by dislike, to put it at a minimum, of the man who drove them out. In more benign circumstances there would of course be some Iraqis living outside Iraq. But these huge numbers, between 4 and 5 million, against a population of 23 million in Iraq, tell a different story.

There is an older generation of educated migrants, including opponents of the regime in its earlier days; then those who fled to avoid the murderous war that Saddam started with Iran; then the half-million or so he expelled into Iran because they were ethnically or religiously suspect; and, finally, the wave after wave of mainly middle-class migrants who came out in the 1990s.

In the broadest sense their motives were political, in that they did not wish to live in Saddam's Iraq, they did not wish their sons to serve in his armies or their most talented members to be coopted into the regime. It is not that, deportations aside, it is easy to leave. Saddam makes that almost impossible for certain professions, such as scientists and doctors, and businessmen often have chosen to sell up and go abroad with only a fraction of their previous wealth.

No doubt there are some abroad who support Saddam, others who are neutral and others who want to see him go but do not think an American war is the way to do it. But what the majority think, in the words of one careful student of Iraqi opinion, is that "military action is the price that has to be paid for the removal of the regime, and this is also the view of most Iraqis in the country". Iraqis at home, leaving aside those so complicit with the regime that they fear change will bring disaster and death to their families, are "worried about bombs raining down on them but things are so bad that they will take that prospect on... People in Iraq are waiting for the strike to happen".

There are few followers among Iraqis, according to the same source, for the "wait until he dies" school, and much fear of the chaos that might come as as Saddam's sons and followers strive to survive. By contrast, most Iraqis regard western predictions about civil war in the aftermath of an American attack as almost racist. Such arguments ignore Iraq's large educated and democratically inclined middle class, much of it in the diaspora but ready to return, the lessons learned by Iraq's peoples under the dictatorship and the heartfelt longing for a new start.

The silence of those in Iraq is understandable. But why are the voices of Iraqis abroad not heard? There are reasons. First, every Iraqi family abroad has hostages at home, in the shape of relatives who remained. Second, there has been until recently an understandable cynicism about how serious the Americans were about displacing Saddam. Third, there is the dominance of the Palestinian issue. Iraqis may feel they have as much right to look to the outside world for redress as Palestinians do, but that is not what the world has seemed to think. Finally, there is the inattention of the west. It does not seem to want to hear, even when Iraqis such as Kanan Makiya (the Iraqi scholar whose analysis of the evils of the regime was so influential at the time of the Gulf war), speak out.

If most Iraqis are ready for the risks of a war to get rid of Saddam, it may not mean in itself that such a war would be wise, but surely it alters the context in which decisions are to be made. The American administration may not see what it plans as primarily a rescue of the Iraqi people but that is, among other things, what it would be.

If we decide not to join in an effort to rescue the Iraqis because the effort would be too costly and dangerous to us, exposing our own populations to unacceptable risk, then we had better be honest about it, as we were during the cold war when we left the Hungarians and others to the mercy of the Russians. Prudence, however, is not the only virtue that nations can display.

Thursday, August 01, 2002

"The last thing the US wants is democracy in Iraq"

"The last thing the US wants is democracy in Iraq" is the (quite possibly accurate) title of a Guardian article by Nick Cohen that was forwarded by a sociologist I know, Marc Garcelon, to a democratic-activist listserver he runs. (He's also forwarded a few other items on this subject.) I couldn't resist dashing off a quick (and partial) response.

I think this is probably right ... and the desire to preserve the Ba'athregime (ideally, with Saddam removed by an internal military coup), in the interests of political "stability," was almost certainly part of the reason forthe cynical (not to say criminal) pseudo-realpolitik with which the endgame of the 1991 Gulf War was conducted. We can definitely say that on one point the first Bush administration, the Arab regimes, Turkey, and most of the European government were in full agreement: the last thing they wanted was to have theIraqi regime overthrown from below by a popular revolution. Thus, the war was deliberately ended quickly, and the elite core of the Iraqi army was allowed to escape intact ... with the result that the overwhelming uprising against theregime was put down with great slaughter, the destruction of the cities ofsouthern Iraq, almost a million Kurdish refugees fleeing across the mountainsinto Turkey and Iran, etc.

To amend a well-known cynical remark of Talleyrand's, this was not just acrime, but a blunder. The people who have suffered the most from this criminalblunder over the last decade have been the Iraqi population. I would say that both moral obligation and political wisdom point to the imperative of doingsomething to correct the damage done by this mistake ... especially since I don't see any other morally or politically acceptable way out of the present impossible situation.

Back in 1991, Kanan Makiya (whom I happen to consider one of the great moraland intellectual heroes of our age) argued convincingly that the oalition that had fought the Gulf War, and in the process done great damage to Iraq in a worthy cause, had an obligation to knock out the Ba'ath regime and commit itselfto a long-term effort for the reconstruction of Iraq and the promotion of a more decent regime (along the lines of Germany, Italy, and Japan after World War II). This hope proved unrealistic (not surprisingly), but his argument wasmorally incontestable, and it remains so today.

If the US goes for a military hardman, it is likely to find a general against whom plausible allegations of war crimes can be made. The alternative is a democratic, federal Iraq, which gives rights to the Kurds and Shias currently suffering under the apartheid rule of the Sunni minority, and places the military under civilian control.

Precisely, and this is what we should be supporting ... rather than a reflexive and simplistic "anti-war" position in defense of a genuinely fascist regime (I use the word "fascist" carefully and advisedly here) with a proven record of hideous cruelty and repression, military adventurism, mass murder, and the use of poison gas against both Iraqi civilians and Iranian soldiers.

The column by Kudlow you forwarded was genuinely repulsive, and confirmed my impression that Larry Kudlow is a dangerous lunatic.

But I have been almost equally offended by the mindless and morally bankruptquality of many of the "anti-war" statements I've been getting over e-maillately. A lot of these are the same people who have been calling for an end tosanctions, on the ground that these are (allegedly) killing Iraqi children. Infact, the sanctions regime has been gradually crumbling for a while. And, atall events, the Ba'ath regime has for a long time has been getting more thanenough oil money to provide food, medical care, and education for its children. (The situation in the autonomous portions of Iraqi Kurdistan, which has beensubject to the same sanctions, and which emerged from the 1991 much moredevastated than the rest of Iraq, is enough to make this clear.) The problem isthat the regime prefers to spend the money on repression, presidential palaces,ethnic cleansing in the Mosul/Kirkuk area and the southern marshes, and acontinuing massive nuclear weapons program.

The effects of sanctions havegenuinely been disastrous, in both humanitarian and political terms. But thereason is that as long as the present Iraqi regime is in control, it cancontinue holding the population hostage. If the sanctions collapse while thepresent regime remains in power (and before September 11, it looked as thoughthis was where things were headed, since the economic incentives to get at Iraqioil money were so strong), the result would be a moral and politicalcatastrophe--and trying to PROMOTE such an outcome is not humanitarianism orprogressive politics, but criminal irresponsibility. The only morally andpolitically acceptable way to end sanctions, and with them the suffering ofordinary Iraqis, is to topple the current regime. (The Iraqi people could havedone this themselves back in 1991, if the Americans had knocked out theRepublican Guard rather than letting it escape and had grounded the regime'shelicopters. But now they need outside help--not unlike the way that theTanzanian army was required to overthrow Idi Amin.)

The key question, as the Guardian article properly says, is HOW this isdone, and with what GOALS. In my opinion, these are the issues that democraticforces in the U.S. (and western Europe) ought to be focusing on. And trying toshape these outcomes is where politics comes in.

=> I say this as someone who remains profoundly troubled by the prospect of aU.S. war against the Iraqi regime--particularly under the leadership of ouralleged President and his appalling administration. NOT because of the kinds ofreasons I hear from Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews as well as more left-wing"anti-war" groupings. The idea that an attack would be somehow in violation ofinternational law, or unprovoked, is ridiculous. In strictly legal terms, thejustification for military action is simple and straightforward: In 1991, afterlosing the Gulf War, the Iraqi regime signed a peace agreement--whose terms ithas consistently and blatantly violated. War is legally justified on thesegrounds alone, so the only question is whether it's wise and morally justified.The suggestion that an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, which is clearly hatedby the great majority of Iraqis, would somehow be an assault on the Iraqipeople--well, this is either disingenuous or absurd.

I am also not convinced by the claims that Saddam Hussein's regime doesn'trepresent a genuine threat to anyone. If Scott Ritter says that the Iraqiregime probably isn't close to getting nuclear weapons, then he's someone whodeserves to be listened to. But his is not the only informed voice on theseissues. And the fact remains that neither he nor anyone else can speak withgreat assurance on this matter, since there have been no inspectors in Iraqsince 1998. The record during the inspections period was that the regimeconsistently used tremendous energy, resources, ingenuity, and duplicity inhiding what it had. It lied blatantly at every point, and the record of theinspections what that the longer and deeper they looked, the more they found.If the regime really has nothing significant to hide, one has to wonder why theytook the step of expelling the UN inspectors and refusing to let them return. Ithink all the evidence points to the conclusion that they have important thingsto hide, and that they've been willing to pay great costs to continue to hidethem.

I have also seen it suggested that even if Saddam Hussein does get a nuclearbomb, there's no reason to be concerned about this possibility. Without goinginto all the reasons why, let me just say that I find this position morally andpolitically idiotic. No, Saddam Hussein would probably not attack New York thenext day. But the key point is that nuclear capability and/or the collapse ofsanctions would give him impunity and let him escape from his box, with allsorts of disastrous consequences. Simply letting the present situation continueand doing nothing, while Iraqi civilians suffer and the remaining sanctionsrestrictions gradually collapse, is probably enough to guarantee this outcome.One very likely and predictable result, in the fairly short run, would almostcertainly be that Saddam Hussein would move toward a Final Solution in IraqiKurdistan,with the slaughter and/or expulsion of most of the Kurdishpopulation--and, just as in 1988-1989, who would lift a finger to stop it? Ifind it hard to see why promoting the likelihood of genocide is an especiallydemocratic or progressive policy.

(Is Saddam Hussein's regime linked to Al Qaeda? I don't know. Maybe alittle, probably not very closely. But either way, a red herring--basicallyirrelevant to the crucial issues.)

=> The more serious concerns have to do, as I said, with HOW such a wasconducted, and what the AFTERMATH might be. I doubt that overthrowing SaddamHussein's regime would be all that difficult militarily (and, as I indicatedabove, I don't think it should raise any legal or moral qualms). But the"realist" fears that the collapse of the Ba'ath dictatorship might lead to thechaotic disintegration of the country are not entirely groundless or dishonest(and that's the one possible moral extenuation for the position of the firstBush administration and its allies in 1991, and of current defenders of theIraqi regime).

I also have, obviously, very little confidence in wisdom, good will, orpolitical intelligence of the current American administration. The first Bushadministration's Iraqi war, in 1991, was a case of military success ruined bypolitical stupidity. Many of the same guys would be running a war now, and thelikelihood is that we'd get the same combination from them.

(Also, of course, a successful war against Saddam Hussein, even if it'stremendously beneficial for the Iraqi people, could also be a political disasterhere, if it wound up boosting support for the Bush administration--just as theFalklands war turned out to be very good for Argentina, since it brought downthe military regime, but a disaster for Britain, since it kept Thatcher inpower.)

The conclusion I draw is that one should support, in principle, the projectof liberating Iraq from the Ba'ath regime, but only on three conditions:

<1> There should be a full, honest, and open debate (I do think it's incrediblethe way the country almost seems to be sleepwalking into a war) followed by aformal Congressional vote. Even right-wingers should be able to see that forthe Bush administration to take us into a war like this on its own initiative,without formal Congressional approval, would be a major blow to our system ofconstitutional representative government.

<2> War should be approved only if this is combined with a clear and crediblecommitment to a long-term effort for the reconstruction of Iraq, with the goalof assisting the development of a decent representative regime--not a newdictatorship. I suspect, frankly, that it's probably not realistic to expectthe emergence of a fully effective democratic regime in the short run. But I amnot convinced that the horrifyingly brutal, repressive, and murderous regime nowruling Iraq is the best possible alternative. (Even by the standards of politics in the Arab world, this regime is one of the most horrible.) Somethingbetter than this is possible--with some outside support and protection. And allpossible political energies should be devoted to locking the U.S. administrationinto the goal of supporting the emergence of a decent constitutionalrepresentative regime in Iraq.

<3> The U.S. (and the rest of the western world, but especially the U.S.) has an obligation not to sell out the Iraqi Kurds again. They deserve to be protected, and to be guaranteed some kind of fair deal in any post-war politicalsettlement. For various reasons, this probably can't mean independence (in theabstract, they probably deserve it as much as anyone else, but realisticallythis is a total non-starter), but it should involve some degree of genuineautonomy.

Therefore, the ultimate aim of "a democratic, federal Iraq, which givesrights to the Kurds and Shias currently suffering under the apartheid rule ofthe Sunni minority, and places the military under civilian control" is preciselythe kind of long-term vision that people like us should be trying to support.This strikes me as both morally and politically superior to simplisticallyopposing military action. If a simple "anti-war" effort is successful, then Ithink the consequences are likely to be disastrous (for the reasons outlinedabove, among others). If it fails, then people who oppose the Bushadministration and its agenda lose any possible leverage to shape HOW the war isconducted, and to influence the goals informing a post-war settlement.

The INC says neither Downing Street nor the Foreign Office has raised avoice in support of its democratic dream. If anything, the Brits are morefanatical supporters of infinite injustice in the Gulf than the Yanks.

Again, this sounds quite plausible to me. But if we take this argumentseriously (and don't just treat it as a way of scoring points against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their friends), then it seems to me that the only decent course is to break with this consensus, not to support (or acquiesce in) "infinite injustice" ourselves.

I agree that this course has its own dangers--to put it mildly. Once a war is set in motion, it can always be directed (or hijacked) to ends that are different from the ones proclaimed. But that, as I said, is where politics comes in. It's also true that war is always awful, and its consequences are always unpredictable. One should never support a war unless there are convincing reasons to think that the likely consequences of doing nothing are going to be even more awful. That's what I feel is the case here.

(I have carefully examined all the "anti-war" arguments I've encountered to see whether they present any morally and politically convincing ALTERNATIVE course of action that faces up realistically to the dilemmas of the situation. So far, I haven't seen anything like this.)

=> I remain very troubled about these questions, and I certainly don't feel any sense of confident certainty about the best response to them. Given the circumstances, all the available alternatives look unpleasant, dangerous and imperfect. But in the real world, one sometimes has to choose the least bad or immoral alternative. (And I certainly feel better arguing for the vision of "a democratic, federal Iraq" than defending a murderous fascist regime trying to get its hands on nuclear weapons.) Since you've sent out several messages on this subject, I thought it was only honest to explain how the situation looks to me.

Iraq sanctions & the moral contradictions of "anti-war" rhetoric

Hi X,

Thanks for sending me yet another petition opposing war in Iraq. As my last message should have made clear, I can't sign it in good conscience ... though I do agree very much with SOME of the points in the statement (and I disagree with others).

Some key points in the statement happen to be mutually contradictory. For example, one reason offered against war is that the sanctions imposed on Iraq are killing Iraqi children, and constitute a major human-rights violation. On the other hand, another point suggests that military action is unnecessary because "the policy of containment [is] working well." One characteristic passage reads:

"In briefings calculated to query the administration's persistent sabre rattling towards Iraq, unnamed officers told the Washington Post that the policy of containment was working well and that the alternative, a military assault, was too riddled with risk to be worth pursuing."

Perhaps, but this contradicts the previous point. Sanctions against Iraq are a crucial part of the "policy of containment." If the sanctions are criminal, then how can the policy be "working well"? And if the sanctions are removed, the "policy of containment" will collapse. You can't have it both ways.

(In fact, as I noted in my previous message, I see the dilemma revealed by this contradiction as critical. One of the reasons I don't believe that it's possible to simply let things go on as they are now is that, in the long run, maintaining sanctions against Iraq is politically unsustainable. The pressure of economic interests has been eroding them steadily, and will eventually lead to their collapse--which will be justified by both sincere concerns and hypocritical crocodile tears about the suffering of Iraqi civilians. If this happens while Saddam Hussein's regime is still in power, the results will be catastrophic. The only morally and politically acceptable way to lift the sanctions is for this to be combined with the overthrow of the Ba'ath regime. It's too bad this wasn't done 5, 6, or even 10 years ago, but better late than never.

At all events, it should be clear by now that "the policy of containment" hasn't been working all that well--as the statement itself suggests.)

=> However I'm inclined to agree with almost everything the statement says about the motives and untrustworthiness of the Bush administration in this matter, and the great dangers of letting it proceed unilaterally. So this issue presents some very difficult dilemmas.

Yours in struggle,Jeff Weintraub

======================[A response from my correspondent --JW]____

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your two thoughtful messages on Iraq and Bush's war drive. I certainly agree whole-heartedly with you on the character of Saddam's regime. However, I believe that several of the claims you make about the sanctions regime and international law are just factually wrong.

Regarding the sanctions, for most of the past 6 or 7 years I too took a position nearly identical to the one you're arguing now, so I understand it very well. However, some recent research outside of the ambit of the New York Times, etc.--spurred by my spring 2002 attendance of a talk by Denis Halliday, former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, and subsequent long conversation with him that evening--convinced me that in fact I had been regurgitating a lot of sophisticated disinformation circulated by US and British policy makers since the mid-1990s. (By the way, the Clinton Administration bears a considerable historical responsibility in all of this. I understand that Clinton was under perpetual investigation and harassment from the Republicans in Congress and probably felt he was in no position to risk political capital on so unpopular a cause as civilian deaths in Iraq. In this sense, the Republicans bear the brunt of the responsibility for what happened, starting with the disgraceful conduct of the Bush I administration in the spring of 1991, which you analyzed thoroughly and accurately in your two messages. Still, Clinton should come clean and apologize to the Iraqi and US people for his administration's Iraq policies, as he did in the case of Rwanda. But let's leave all this aside for now and cut to the heart of the empirical disagreement I have with your position.)

I'll follow your lead and bounce off excerpts from your pieces.Some key points in the statement happen to be mutually contradictory. For example, one reason offered against war is that the sanctions imposed on Iraq are killing Iraqi children, and constitute a major human-rights violation. On the other hand, another point suggests that military action is unnecessary because "the policy of containment [is] working well." One characteristic passage reads:

"In briefings calculated to query the administration's persistent saber rattling towards Iraq, unnamed officers told the Washington Post that the policy of containment was working well and that the alternative, a military assault, was too riddled with risk to be worth pursuing."

Perhaps, but this contradicts the previous point. Sanctions againstIraq are a crucial part of the "policy of containment." If the sanctionsare criminal, then how can the policy be "working well"? And if thesanctions are removed, the "policy of containment" will collapse. You can't have it both ways.

Well, actually two distinct claims are being made here. The first asserts that the sanctions regime as it has worked over the last decade has constituted a major human rights violation. The second says that the policy of containment has been effective in containing Saddam's geopolitical ambitions and his attempts to maintain the capability to produce and use weapons of mass destruction. In fact both of these claims are true. The only contradiction would be if the sanctions regime as constituted over the past decade played a crucial role in making containment work, which--in direct contradiction to your assumptions--is manifestly false. Most of the sanctions had very little to do with the success of the policy of containment, which worked because of the constraints imposed on the Iraqi military by the no-fly zones, etc. Think here about the Soviet Union in the Cold War period and you begin to see how peripheral sanctions against food and medicine really are in this story--except in helping Saddam revive his regime in the eyes of some of his brutalized subjects.

In retrospect, what should have been implemented immediately after the Gulf War were "smart sanctions"--limited restrictions of the sale of certain military materials to Hussein, like military equipment, military spare parts, ammunition, and supercomputers. (Well, what REALLY should have happened was that the US should have backed the popular revolution in Iraq, instead of betraying it to Hussein, but we've already covered that.) Instead, the sanctions imposed were brutal and counterproductive, as they targeted the whole Iraqi economy and its people (especially children),destroyed the middle-class base of any possible alternative regime, and pulled off a truly remarkable feat: they helped revive Saddam's legitimacy among significant sectors of the Iraqi population, which has turned harshly anti-US. Think Stalin at the end of the Second World War or Castro under the embargo for the appropriate historical analogy.

The column by Kudlow you forwarded was genuinely repulsive, and confirmed my impression that Larry Kudlow is a dangerous lunatic.

But I have been almost equally offended by the mindless and morally bankrupt quality of many of the "anti-war" statements I've been getting over e-mail lately. A lot of these are the same people who have been calling for an end to sanctions, on the ground that these are (allegedly) killing Iraqi children. In fact, the sanctions regime has been gradually crumbling for a while. And, at all events, the Ba'ath regime has for a long time has been getting more than enough oil money to provide food, medical care, and education for its children. (The situation in the autonomous portions of Iraqi Kurdistan, which has been subject to the same sanctions, and which emerged from the 1991 much more devastated than the rest of Iraq, is enough to make this clear.) The problem is that the regime prefers to spend the money on repression, presidential palaces, ethnic cleansing in the Mosul/Kirkuk area and the southern marshes, and a continuing massive nuclear weapons program.

I think this paragraph is simply wrong on a number of crucial points. You are certainly right about the regime's expenditures on repression and grandiose projects for the Ba'ath elite. But the situation is much more complex than you indicate. For instance, the vast majority of the civilian deaths in Saddam-controlled Irag have been caused by two utterly indefensible components of the sanction regime. The first of these was the prohibition of the import of many medicines designated under the most flimsy of conditions as transferable to bioweapons uses, like common vaccines, antibiotics, chemotherapy drugs, and so on. The second concerns the import of water-infrastructure materials. The majority of child deaths in Iraq since 1992 have been caused by water-borne diseases carried to homes and villages through the wreckage of the public water-supply system, which was deliberately targeted and bombed during the Gulf War--a war crime, by the way, under the Geneva Convention that had no conceivable military purpose. For reasons that are simply impossible to defend, the US and Britain have repeatedly vetoed the UN teams responsible for implementing the "oil for food" program from allowing the import of any of the water pumps, filters, pipes and so on that the Hussein regime would need to import to fix the previously state-of-the-art water system. Moreover, they have systematically blocked the regime from contracting this work out to Western firms, though they have allowed plenty of Western firms to buy Iraqi oil and export luxury items to the elite. Thus Dick Cheney's tenure at Halliburton included the setting up of front corporations in Central Asia to "do bidness" with Saddam--but for oil and oil-drilling and pipeline equipment, not to ship medicines or water pumps. Finally, the US and Britain have blocked the regime from importing many of the medicines that are needed to treat water-borne illnesses among young children.

Why such policies? I think it's just a consequence of a bunch of immoral and corrupt clowns in the Congress and the British Parliament who were ready to jump all over any colleague who dared to show "weakness" toward Saddam by talking, for instance, about civilian deaths in Iraq. So they just kept in place a policy that amounted to the mass murder of children and which only strengthened the dictator they were ostensibly targeting. Wow, great, makes you proud to be an American or a Brit. Here, I think much of the leftist rhetoric on the sanctions is quite justified. You should download and read through the following pieces by Denis Halliday on these matters: http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2002/03/20/halliday/print.html http://www.zmag.org/edwinthalliday.htm

In strictly legal terms, the justification for military action is simple and straightforward: In 1991, after losing the Gulf War, the Iraqi regime signed a peace agreement--whose terms it has consistently and blatantly violated. War is legally justified on these grounds alone, so the only question is whether it's wise and morally justified. The suggestion that an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, which is clearly hated by the great majority of Iraqis, would somehow be an assault on the Iraqi people--well, this is either disingenuous or absurd.

I think you're really off-base here, Jeff. First, no matter how much some majority of the Iraqi populace hates Saddam's fascist regime, it's simply ludicrous to suggest that they therefore would prefer to be bombed into an early grave. One of the things I find most horrifying about the current debate about Iraq is the almost complete silence on the civilian causalities such an attack would entail. Since Baghdad would have to be taken, and since the US and the Brits will clearly preface the attack with withering bombing with high-tech incendiary weaponry, you're talking tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, and countless more injured and impoverished for the rest of their lives. Is this a price they're willing to pay? Neither the American or British governments has the slightest right to make this decision for the people of Iraq, anymore than Saddam and his henchmen do. More on this in a moment; first let's deal with the international law issue.

The whole crux of the matter turns on whether or not the Saddam regime fulfilled the terms of the Gulf War settlement on weapons of mass destruction. According to the majority of the top officials who oversaw the UNSCOM and other UN programs on the ground in Iraq from 1992-98--including Scott Ritter, Halliday, and Hans von Sponeck (who replaced Halliday after the later resigned in protest of the cynical and manipulative policies of the American and British governments)--Iraqi has come as close to full compliance as can be proved in a court of law. Even Richard Butler, who has consistently argues that Saddam remains bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, argues that there is no legal case for attacking Iraq. Thus your whole argument crumbles--according to the extant international law, a US invasion of Iraq tomorrow without presentation of proof of Iraqi non-compliance with the Gulf War protocols would have all the legal standing of Hitler's invasion of Poland. And it would be seen as such across the Middle East and South Asia, a fact that only a fool or a megalomaniac would ignore.

The only thing the US and Britain have going for them legally is the fact that Saddam expelled the weapons inspectors in 1998. But this is a flimsy thread indeed, as by 1998 UNSCOM had certified that 90-95% of his WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capabilities had been demolished, and ye t the US and Britain refused to lift the sanctions any way. In Ritter's words, it would be "physically impossible" to identify 100 percent of pre-Gulf War Iraqi WMD capabilities, because of the massive destruction of Iraqi weapons facilities during the war and because the Iraqis themselves scrambled to destroy remaining WMD materials in the mid-1990s that they had been trying to hang onto in the years immediately following the Gulf War, before UNSCOM could get to them and nail them for violating the sanctions. Ritter lays all this out in the piece I circulated a few days ago. Thus the US and British argument that sanctions can not be lifted until "100 percent" of pre-Gulf War Iraqi WMD materials have been identified and destroyed is a total red herring, and Iraq quickly realized that under international law, the US and Britain were violating the terms of the Gulf War settlement themselves. This gave the Iraqis the international cover they needed to kick the inspectors out.

To top all this off, the Iraqis have repeatedly agreed in negotiations with Kofi Annan to re-admit inspection teams, but the Americans and British keep insisting on such outlandish and absurd conditions for the inspectors that the regime can't possibly agree, as the conditions the US and Britain are demanding in fact would constitute an agreement to let the CIA and M-5 come in and erect the infrastructure to organize a coup against the regime. No regime would do this, and why would Saddam? Being the thug he is, he'd rather go down punching than let the CIA inspect all of his bedrooms and figure out how to assassinate him. Saying this in no way amounts to an apology for Saddam's totalitarian despotism, it just states things the way they are. In sum, your argument that the US has a clear legal basis under international law to attack Iraq is just plain wrong. A Reuter's article on Tuesday, July 30, demonstrates that the French and German governments agree with my interpretation: "French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Tuesday they could not support any possible U.S. attack on Iraq without a United Nations mandate. 'An attack would only be justified if a mandate was approved by the U.N. Security Council. That is the position of Germany and France,' Chirac told a joint news conference after a Franco-German summit in the eastern city of Schwerin. Schroeder said German troops could only participate in such an action with a U.N. mandate and if the German parliament agreed. 'There would be no majority for intervention without a U.N. mandate,' he told the news conference. Chirac said he hoped Iraqi President Saddam Hussein realized it was in his interest to accept the readmission of U.N. weapons inspectors in return for lifting of sanctions against Baghdad. 'I think Iraq would do well to understand how necessary it is for his country to quickly agree with the Secretary General of the United Nations,' he said. " (See )

The fact that the UN and most of our allies agree with me on this point underscores the danger of going along with Bush on his crazy war drive, for it legitimates Bush's tendency to define "international law" as "whatever I decide is law," a tendency whose cumulating consequences are now bearing fruit in the form of a drift into generalized global warfare and a "permanent state of emergency" in the United States. Moreover, the launching of an attack under these circumstances would be considered an act of international aggression and terrorism, and any Iraqi civilian deaths would rightly be considered a war crime under international law. Maybe this is one reason the Bushies were so insistent on withdrawing the US from the International Criminal Court? A final set of remarks on your analysis. I don't disagree with your assessment of what Saddam would do if he could reconstitute WMD capabilities. All the evidence, however, points to the success of containment, and there's no reason we can't continue containment in a more humane form by lifting sanctions against the Iraqi civilian sector i n return for the re-introduction of UN weapons inspectors under conditions deemed reasonable by the UN as a whole, not just the American and British governments. Containment has been highly effective in the past with similar regimes possessing similar capabilities (think Stalin), and will continue to be the only viable and morally justifiable policy option for similar cases in the future. Moreover, such a policy shift would spare the greatest number of innocent Iraqi civilian lives while maximizing the chances for a post-Hussein democratization without handing the Islamo-fascists across the Middle East and South Asia the Mother of All political opportunities.

For all these reasons, I urge you, indeed I plead with you, to sign the petition and bring your wisdom, insight and nuance actively into the anti-war movement, where it is sorely needed to temper some of our younger and less well-informed hot heads. Sitting on the sidelines is disastrous in these circumstances; think of all the compromises that had to be made in the fight against Hitler, for instance--like working with Stalin. The discomfort of working with some over-heated young anarchists on the left of the anti-war movement looks trivial, by comparison. Here, I'm afraid rhetorical excess is inevitable. But I strongly feel that the term "neofascism" is very accurate as applied to the Bush regime, and for simply descriptive, historical reasons. There's no need to review here the stealing of elections, the corporate authoritarianism, the ultra-rightist faux Christian millenarianism, the sweeping suspensions of constitutional protections, the flagrant and repeated violations of laws like the Freedom of Information Act, and on and on. What we're seeing in the drive to launch a war against Iraq is the imperial component of the package in its rawest and most savage form. Bush and Saddam and their neofascist ilk need each other to keep their megalomaniac ambitions going. At the same time that Bush is cratering in the polls, he's painted himself into a corner on Iraq. Though I feel more and more confident that we can drive Bush from office before 2004, the most dangerous time to be around a mad beast is when it's wounded. So the situation demands urgent action to paralyze Bush from below, with mass protests and any and every peaceful means we can muster.

One last point--think about Israel in all of this. Is it not clear that Bush, like Sharon, wants to prevent any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though for very different reasons than Sharon? Isn't the goal here to keep Israel hyper-dependent on the US so that the US can call in chits from the Israeli right when it needs some regional dirty work done? Isn't the goal also to divert Arab anger from the US onto "the Jews"? Aren't such policies the height of cynicism, and don't they objectively feed the growing anti-Semitism in the Arab world? And if the US has to drastically and suddenly scale back its imperial policies in the near to mid-range future, a la the Soviets in the 80s, won't this leave the Israeli people hung out to dry, to pay the price of Bush's war-mongering and cynical use of "the Israeli card" in today's circumstances? The stakes couldn't be higher for all the peoples of the world. Again, for all these reasons, I urge you, I plead with you, I beg you, to sign the petition and join actively in the rapidly growing anti-war movement.

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research.. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and is currently a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)